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Bohemian Rhapsody

This hugely enjoyable biopic of Freddie Mercury and his band
Queen features a wonderful lead
performance from Rami Malek (of Mr Robot
fame). Without him Bohemian Rhapsody
would be a breezy musical ride through Queen’s back catalogue, following them
from early 1970s glam rock beginnings to their global coronation at Live Aid in
1984.

The opening Queen-ified Twentieth-Century Fox fanfare sets the film’s tongue-in-cheeky tone. Fact and fiction blur as momentous events in the band’s career and Freddie’s life are reduced to amusing one-liners. Bohemian Rhapsody skates over the surface of Mercury’s private life but still manages to pack in two love stories and a darker one of hedonism and betrayal.

Above all, we are treated to the mostly fantastic original
music. With guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor on board as Musical
Producers, the cinema sound quality is loud, proud and crystal clear. We watch
amusing dramatizations of the genesis of hits like We Will Rock You, Another One
Bites the Dust and Bohemian Rhapsody itself, which, at first listen, did not
wow the critics. “It’s six bloody minutes!” splutters (fictional) EMI exec Ray
Foster (Mike Myers in a scene-stealing cameo). “What on earth is it about?
Scaramouche? Galileo? Beelzebub? And that Ismallah business?” What EMI is
really looking for is “a song teenagers can bang their heads to in a
car”.

Queen are shown
pushing musical boundaries and trying to mix genres at a time when rock and pop
didn’t really do opera or disco. The band also poke fun at gender stereotypes
in their video for I Want to Break Free, which, ridiculously, was banned in
America – presumably because it made its straight-laced moral guardians feel uncomfortable
seeing Roger Taylor dressed as a schoolgirl. Freddie: “they’re puritans in
public and perverts in private.”

Egyptian-American actor Rami Malek shares something of Mercury’s exotic charisma. He has big expressive brown eyes, angular cheekbones and the rock star’s strut. At first Malek’s false front teeth look a bit Dick Emery comedy vicarish, but he grows into them, just as he grows into the part the longer he’s on screen. Malek obviously did his YouTube homework, to the point that he often seems to be channeling Freddie’s camp bravado and waspish wit.

When we first meet buck-toothed Farrokh Bulsara he is
working as a baggage-handler at Heathrow Airport, on the look-out for something
more than the casual racism he attracts from his co-workers. He goes to see a
band called Spice, whose singer has just quit. “Then you’ll need a new
one,” says Farrokh, breaking into song, and leaving them slack-jawed with
amazement. “I was born with 4 extra incisors,” he tells his
bandmates, “more teeth means more range.”

Transforming himself into Freddie Mercury doesn’t go down
well with his father, who warns him “you can’t get anywhere pretending to be
someone that you’re not.” His sexuality remains under wraps, as he proposes to
his girlfriend, Mary (Lucy Boynton), but she soon states the bleedin’ obvious: “Freddie,
you’re gay”.

New slimy personal manager Paul (Allen Leech) leads him
astray and soon Freddie is burning the candle at both ends (“the glow is so
divine!”). Falling out with Mary and the band, he embraces the excesses of early
1980s partying with (gay) abandon: “Shake the freak tree and invite anyone who drops
to the ground – dwarves, giants … and priests. We’re going to need to confess.”

Bohemian Rhapsody had a troubled history – original director Bryan Singer was fired and Sacha Baron Cohen, cast to play Freddie, also left following ‘creative differences’. With them on board it could have been a much darker and more realistic biopic. But the film has camp silliness and rakish charm; it ends up being enormous fun, much like Freddie himself.